In Judging the Voting Rights Act, Professors Adam B. Cox and Thomas J. Miles report that judges are more likely to find liability under section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) when they are African American, appointed by a Democratic president, or sit on an appellate panel with a judge who is African American or a Democratic appointee. Cox and Miles posit that their findings “contrast” and “cast doubt” on much of the “conventional wisdom” about the Voting Rights Act, by which they mean the core findings we reported in Documenting Discrimination in Voting: Judicial Findings Under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act Since 1982, and a related study by one of us, Not Like the South?: Regional Variation and Political Participation Through the Lens of Section 2.

Judicial decisions provide a wealth of information—but information about what? In recent years, the empirical study of judicial decisions has exploded in popularity as legal academics and social scientists have conducted statistical analyses of court decisions in many substantive areas of law. The purpose of these empirical investigations is to learn something about the way in which judges decide cases. Typically, these studies ask whether a judge’s identity or background—her ideological disposition, race, education, experience, and so forth—influence the way in which she decides cases.  Rarely, and only when demanding conditions are met, have researchers looked to the success rates in published cases to glean information about the facts that underlie those lawsuits.